Maduru oya National park (මාදුරු ඔය ජාතික වනෝදයානය) is one of four national parks created in Mahaweli Development project. It is situated crossing two districts: Polonnaruwa and Ampara. There are few isolated mountains situated at Maduru Oya national park. Omunugala is the highest of it (513m).

It was few months back when I saw a lovely documentary on Derana TV which was done by Chatura Alwis. The documentary featured a mountain called Dhanigala and its temple. Though I had been to the temple in 2013 I couldn’t explore the region much and this documentary made me recall a forgotten expedition.

It’s such an amazing sight to watch them and one would never get tired of watching, no matter how many times they come across, this wonderful creature. It’s even more wonderful when you get to see them in their natural habitat such as the wild life parks and forests. Lately, I was itching to go see as many of them as possible and when Sheham came up with the idea of visiting Maduru Oya I kept jumping up and down till I was exhausted.

The coming weekend was Vesak holidays and there would be plenty of free food everywhere waiting for me to have a taste. So I decided to hang around Maha oya and experience the village style of celebrating Vesak though my main objective was visiting few archaeology sites. I got together with my batch mate Chanaka and arrived at Maha oya leisurely at around 9am and after having some breakfast we wanted to visit one of the Mega irrigation projects which was underway.

Pollonnaruwa is rich of archeological sites. There are rare places than our popular visits. I got to know about some of these places by a book and it made my visit at these sites. I did this travelling intermittently when I found a free time as well as a friend(s) to travel with me. Therefore I can’t say exact number of days need to cover all these places.

We started the journey from Maha-oya around 2.30 pm in the evening. This is the best time to start from Maha oya because by 4-5 pm we can reach to Maduru oya reservoir to see the beauty of it with setting sun and to see the wild elephant as well. We took the left turn just before the Maha-oya police station at Maha-oya town. It can be easily identified as Aralaganwila road and the name board is also there for Maha-oya hot water springs.

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